Feelings: Signal or Noise?

Don’t blindly follow your every feeling. They are right sometimes, but more often they are wrong. This is one of the most important things I learned in the last two years.

Feeling “Puzzled”

Once in a while, I have this puzzled feeling. Everytime when this happens, there are something that I cannot explain. My mind is blocked and I cannot think clearly. It is neither anxious nor irritated, just perplexed and confused. When I’m in this state, I just cannot work well. Maybe I can do some mindless chores, but I definitely can’t do mentally challenging work like programming or project planning.

Over time, I learned that it usually means one of the following things:

1. I’m tired (likely lack of sleep), or
2. There are too many things happening at the same time (often in a rush) and I haven’t formed a plan in mind yet

So it is a signal for me to get some rest or take time to review the latest updates to make clear a plan forward. It’s like your phone telling you that the battery is running low. And after a good night sleep or a few hours of letting my mind wander, this puzzled feeling will be gone.

Mood is Temporary

Besides feeling puzzled, I feel happy, relaxed, or anxious, stressed, from time to time. Sometimes the interval of mood change is so short, I can go from super stressed from work to fully relaxed in just 2 to 3 hours. Sometimes it is because of work I completed, but sometimes I just have a meal and the whole mood changes.

Such changes occur so randomly (of course, I have learned some patterns). Talking to a friend, going for a walk, or getting a shower, mood goes better. Sometimes just a short message freaks me out (inside). Mood is so unstable and temporary. We just can’t trust every mood, every feeling. Our mood and feelings are giving us information for our reference, not command to follow.

As I have gradually observed this characteristic of our feelings and moods, I started to think of them as a summary prepared by my brain. Our brain process so many information and so many thoughts in a day. We can’t have enough focus to every details in our life. So our brain evolved to abstract out these details and only send us (the consciousness) a summary report.

Feelings as the Guidance, with Judgements Required

Evolution in the nature takes millions of years for some “tiny” changes. We the human race have drastically transformed our everyday environment in just a few thousand years, while our inner wiring is still pretty much paleolithic (or even older). The difference is intelligence. The ability to make judgements in a complex context by processing many factors is what catalysed all the progress we have.

Whether a feeling is a signal or some noise? We can ask what the feeling means at that moment. Use it as a guidance to look for causes. For example, failure is a painful feeling. We feel hurt when we fail, but we have to use it as a guidance to look for reasons of the failure. This is the way to grow.

Feeling happy or satisfied? Look for the reason(s) of success and be grateful for it.

Feeling stressed or anxious? Look for a way to resolve it. Focus on the road, not the wall. Or else you will crash into the wall.

Feeling tired? Get some sleep or it is time to switch the task you are doing and come back later.